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Show Unseen Effects of Wage Law By GL'S W. DYER j Professor of Economics and Sociology, Vandcrbilt Univrrxity The average man thinks of the industrial in-dustrial life of this country as confined con-fined almost exclusively to a group of big factories and medium sized factories, located locat-ed in big cities or big indus- i trial centers. ! Conditions in these big indus- 1 tries are the foundation for practically all of the labor legislation at Washington. The public in general is under un-der a delusion that the big industries in-dustries have driven out nrnMlrnllv nil three members of a family at work, even at low wages, the family is able to maintain its independence and respectability. re-spectability. A very large proportion of the:; small industries arc located in smnll towns, villages and rural communities. communi-ties. There are 13.433 small towns in this country that have populations of 2.500 and less. Over 10,000 towns have populations of less than 1,000. The combined population of these small towns is 9,183,035. This is a population popula-tion greater than the combined populations popu-lations of Boston, St. Louis, St. Paul, Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Pitts-burgh, New Orleans. Dallas. Houston, Indianapolis and Chicago. Yet little thought is given to the life and problems prob-lems of these little towns. Few of those who are operating these small industries are making much -above a simple, decent living. These industries are in no condition to absorb any extra business cost. The productivity of labor is a definite, fixed quantity that can be determined 1 definitely on the market. The labor in an industry must produce the valu of the waies paid or the industry i; doomed. These small industries have no reserve out of which to pay continuous con-tinuous losses. A minimum wage of 40c an hour or $3.20 a d;iy for eight hours would mean the elimination of all workers who cannot produce th minimum, and Ibis would, perhaps, mean the elimination of over one-h-jlf of the workers in 1hc small industries, indus-tries, and the closing nf a very largp proportion of these industries. It ir doubtful if the serious results of thr minimum wage on these Industrie would ever reach the newspapers. The 13. 433 small, independent, self-supporting, self-supporting, self -respecting communities communi-ties in which small business lives and thrives are the very heart of re;il American life and American ideal? If left alone they will lake rare of themselves under American ConMi-tutionnl ConMi-tutionnl industrial freedom. It ir liMI less than a crime for an ab-.r-ntc-. centralized government to make it il-le;;;j il-le;;;j for honest. Upright citizen': U' offer millions of workers in Uk towns an opportunity to work nii'l support their families by their work It is far worse for a government lo force these people In join the rnnk-of rnnk-of the dependents and the mendicant,.. ' of the small factories. The few left are not considered worthy of consideration con-sideration in labor legislation. As a matter of fact, the big industries have not c" iven out the small factories. The small factories make up a very large part of our industrial life today. In 1929, 210,954 factories of all types were in operation in this country. Over 7,000 of these factories employed ' no wage earners: 95,767 employed from one to five wage earners; 53,524 emploved from six to 20 wage earners; earn-ers; and 25.022 employed from 21 to 50 wage earners. The total number of wage earners emploved in these small factories was 1. 089.847. The average number of wage earners in the 174,313 small industries in operation was 10. These little factories that give employment em-ployment to nearly two million people peo-ple are located in cities, towns, villages in the rural sections, everywhere. every-where. Among them we find sawmills, grist-mills, feed mills, chair factories, furniture factories, mattress factories, textile factories, sheet - iron industries, indus-tries, clothing factories, overall factories, fac-tories, etc. The wages of each employe are determined de-termined by the productivity of the worker. Each gets the market value of his services. The skilled get high wages; the unskilled, the untrained, the slow, the inefficient get relatively low w-ges. But all are paid by the 3ame t',ndard the standard of their productive capacity. With two or |
